Friday, June 16, 2006

Red Cross Banquet

Yesterday I attended a Red Cross banquet for pheresis donors. It was held in Bentley's on Broadway, which is the old Fraternal Order of Eagles building. Pheresis is a process in which blood is drawn from a donor, then run through a centifuge. Platelets and plasma are seperated out, and red blood cells are returned to the donor. This allows the donor to contribute up to 24 times a year instead of only 6 times a year. The platelets are used to help hemophiliacs and cancer patients.

There they fed and entertained us. Several nurses sang and danced on stage. They did their own renditions of "So Happy Together", "Daydream Believer", and "Proud to be an American". For that last song, the crowd stood up and sang along with the chorus. The lyrics had been slightly modified for the times: "And I won't forget the ones who died" instead of "men who died". It reminded me of the change in Star Trek's "To Boldly Go" speech.

For more information on pheresis, please call (260)480-8299 or 1-800-589-8127.

3 comments:

I have only undergone pheresis once, but it was the other way around. They took the red blood cells and returned everything else. This gave the donor the advantage of going only half as often as if I had given whole blood.